


Three on a Match

by inlovewithnight



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-02
Updated: 2006-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-15 21:44:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/165219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight





	Three on a Match

Racetrack can't look at Apollo without thinking about Death.

If they had a single other Raptor pilot to spare--Gods, on top of everything else, Boomer's little secret identity took her out of the frakking cockpit--she would try to get out of shuttle duty when he needs a ride here or there in the fleet. But there's no chance of that, so she sits as straight as she can in the pilot's chair while he leans back in the co-pilot's, staring at the ceiling, tapping his fingers against the armrests. Aside from that it's quiet, just her and him and Death making their way through the vacuum. He tells her to correct her angle of approach. She radios ship to ship for clearance. Death sits in the jump seat, invisible and frakking loud in the silence.

She stood in the CIC and watched when Boomer shot the old man. She saw Apollo run to his father, screaming like he'd been cut to the heart, trying to block Death's way to the body with his own.

She wonders what it's like to have a parent's death approach you in person, instead of taking place in the abstract among a hundred million others. She wonders if he knows how damned lucky he was to have the chance to get that blood on his hands.

She hauled him in from the cold during the battle with the resurrection ship. She pressed the paddles to his chest and forced his heart back on the job, even though she was more than half sure he would've been glad to go. Like she gave a frak. If she has to stay here and keep suiting up every day, when all she wants is lie down with her eyes closed until her body crumbles into dust...well, if she has to stay, so does he.

It was just chance that she was on search and rescue for that fight. Except that she's beginning to think maybe it wasn't. She's had time to think it over since all this happened, in her bunk late in ship's night when she's too edgy to sleep and too tired to look her crewmates in the face without wanting to throw a punch. The more nights like that she's had, the more chances to think it over, the surer she feels that it's _her_ Death is following around.

Death's walking one step behind her, reaching out and touching those she passes; playing with some and pulling back, snatching others away forever. Some kind of a game, maybe, where the goal is driving Margaret insane and the prize is when she finally goes down to the showers and eats her gun.

The scriptures have it all wrong, every face of Death. Death isn't a black-cloaked man in a chariot, or an old woman measuring and cutting off the thread of life, or any other symbol. Racetrack is pretty sure she's met Death, and it isn't abstract at all.

About a year before the attacks, a bad batch of Sagittaron fever vaccine went out to the Fleet--one of Adar's cut-military-spending showpieces coming around to bite him in the ass, when two Battlestars were shut down as plague zones. Most of the crew had a mild case for a week and then shook it off. Others got hit hard. Racetrack was one of Galactica's that Cottle washed his hands of and sent off to recover planetside.

And that's where she met Death, twisted up with fever and misery on Picon. Death came and sat next to her bed; Death wore a nurse's uniform, had hair like sunlight breaking across glass, and was beautiful enough to make a devotee of Aphrodite weep. Death touched Margaret's face and stroked her hair with one hand, and whispered _Are you alive?_ while the other hand hovered idly over the controls on the intravenous line.

Margaret lay there warm in the haze of her fever, watching the way the hospital lights turned Death's hair into a halo. Her heart was at peace, she gave herself over. But after a moment, Death only smiled, and touched her face again, and walked away.

Racetrack sees Death sometimes, here and there in the fleet and the gray corners of Galactica, fleeting glimpses out of the corner of her eye, just where you'd expect Death to be. It doesn't surprise her in the slightest.

The Raptor settles down on Cloud Nine's docking platform nice and easy. It's a simulator-perfect landing, and she gives herself a mental pat on the back, because Gods know her CAG doesn't notice. He's already heading for the door, his mind on the other side of the ship, wherever his companion in R&R is waiting.

"See you at zero-eight-hundred tomorrow, sir," she says, punching a note into her log and getting ready to start the launch sequence all over again.

"Sounds good, Racetrack," he replies, distracted, on his way down the ramp. "Fly safe."

"Roger that." She doesn't have to fly safe. She doesn't have anything to worry about; Death doesn't want her yet. She wonders if he knows that as he hurries past the ID check and into the Cloud Nine crowd, Death is sauntering along behind him in high heels.  



End file.
